Pablo's theory was that Mariah's strikes had been gender-based. She had tried to kill Eris, the female, but both the targets of the kidnappings had been male. Pablo just hoped she was coming back for more.
Tobias had been situated in the center of the tea petal field, waiting for her return as the bait. Pablo and Eris had both instructed him sternly not to jeopardize his safety. Now the pair were under a shield of invisibility, waiting for the fortress to come back.
It was Tobias that sensed it first, a tingling, vibrating sensation in the air. He looked up just in time to see the black monolith reappear again out of thin air. "There it is," Pablo said tensely to Eris, drawing a triangle and a few numbers in his book. "Grab onto my neck."
She put down the flask she had been sipping from, then did so without hesitation, just in time as he teleported, landing on the top of the wall, The wall seemed to be largely ringing an expansive field with a brook running through it, and Eris thought she spotted a strange white horse. "Why just a field?" she muttered.
"The rest is underneath," Pablo said, doing some more sketches. "We have to find an opening, and very quickly, while she's snatching Tobias."
Eris scanned the field, then pointed. "There. Where that rainbow is touching down."
"What makes you think that?" Pablo asked, even as he was measuring the airflow around the spot.
"You know, pot of gold and all that." She shrugged.
He finished his numbers, then nodded. "I think you're right. Neck again." She grabbed onto the shorter boy, and he teleported them again, right next to the end of the rainbow, which indeed did have an empty pot. Eris lifted it, revealing a set of stairs down. "Hurry, hurry, get down."
He jumped down them, and she followed quickly, shutting the hidden door behind her quickly. "Okay, now we're in. Let's find our boys and get Tobias back."
The zombie in question had been momentarily overcome by a quick sense of dizzy spinning as the beam of light grabbed him up, teleporting him up through the fortress to the flowery field. Remembering Pablo and Eris's words to him, he decided to stay put until he absolutely had to move. He looked up at the sky, which was practically cloudless, and perfectly blue. What an innocent sky, he thought reflectively to himself. It has no idea what's going on down here.
Slowly, the sound of footsteps reached his ears, a soft clod-clod through the grass and damp dirt, and finally a shadow fell over him. Tobias tilted his head, looking up at the strange horse and the woman perched on top of it.
Mariah wrinkled her nose as she saw who she had caught. "Oh, it's an icky zombie. Damn. I was hoping for a real hottie."
Tobias was momentarily glad for his altered state as he watched the woman, feeling a slow anger as he remembered what she had done to Eris, that she had two of his friends captive. Suppressing the feelings, he offered a timid, shy voice. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't mean to intrude. Perhaps you'll let me go?"
She pulled him into a sitting position, taking his head in both hands and tilting it this way and that, as if examining a piece of meat. "Hm, well, you're not half-bad looking, I'll give you that. And I like your attitude." She stood up and snapped her fingers, as if suddenly realizing something. "Well, that's easy enough to fix! How about it, want to be part of my harem?"
"Your... harem?" he questioned slowly, keeping his voice timid, even as his mind debated what spell he could blow off an arm for and take her out with.
"Yes," she said cheerily, "my harem of beautiful men. I can never have enough to appreciate me, after all. It'll take me just a moment to fix that little problem of yours, you know. I'm the most powerful mage in the world."
Tobias bit back a sarcastic response. "I don't know," he said noncommittally, hoping to stall for time.
Apparently, that was as good enough as a yes for her. Putting a finger to her forehead, she let a little power swirl off her hand, and it grew in size, covering him in a swirl of light before it drove itself into his body. It felt like he was being torn in two, or having his body separated from the rest of him, and he couldn't help but scream, a burning sensation flooding underneath every inch of his skin. And with the burning came flashes of memory, back to the night he had been turned, and then his insides went up in flames. A corner of his mind noted around the pain that he hadn't even done anything to provoke her.
"Hm, that didn't work quite as well as I thought," he could hear her voice say, as if down a tunnel. "Oh well."
He tried to curse at her, but it only came out a groan as he rolled onto his side, clutching at his abdomen. "What did... you do?" he panted out.
She frowned, although he wasn't looking at her face. "How rude. I fixed you. Show a little gratitude."
He didn't respond directly, but his stomach did, heaving up through his throat and provoking him into throwing up across the perfectly detailed flowers, coating the ground as he heaved again, each pull seeming to tug right down to his toes. "What the hell are you doing?!" Mariah demanded, grabbing him by the hair and yanking him back. "That's my field you're ruining!"
He gasped for air, but didn't really feel like apologizing. "What did you do to me?" he repeated breathlessly. "You caused this."
She gave him a shake by the hair, pulling him close. "I caused nothi--"
The shaking was a bit much, and his dizzy mind connected with his digestive tract and decided, hey, they could give it another heave-ho for the motherland. The heave started with a pull on his toes, rippling up through his body in an unstoppable wave, and his head jerked as he vomited once again, covering Mariah from top to bottom in an arc of stomach acid and half-digested brain. That done, he dropped back onto his knees, too utterly drained to stand any longer.
Mariah's face was like a chiselled statue of complete and utter surprise and shock as she stood there for a moment, not moving. Then she slowly looked down at herself, at her formerly perfectly white dress decorated with little loops and designs in silver and gold (authentic silver and gold, mind you) that was now covered with a putrid mixture of all the brains that Tobias had eaten in the last week-- largely animal brains, mostly boar, but there were some deer and cow and goat and fish mixed in (although not a lot of fish because they weren't very filling) and a parakeet, when in the world had he eaten THAT? The mess was a chunky rainbow of all the most digusting colors to ever grace a woman's figure, and oh, the smell was to high heaven of acid and rotting flesh. She stared, and her lower lip began to quiver, as if she was going to cry.
And cry she did, but at a screamingly high volume that rose and fell with her upset, panicked shrieks as she declared to Tobias, the castle and anyone within a ten mile radius that her dress was RUINED and how could such a thing happen to HER, the most perfect of princesses and it just wasn't FAIR and how could Tobias DO THAT and didn't he know she was going to sue?! The screaming continued for several long moments, perfect tears rolling down her dirtied face as she screeched away, arms flailing in upset indignancy as she stomped about, getting her perfect white shoes even more covered in decomposing brain as she walked though Tobias's previous puddles. She was unaware that her only audience was Tobias, who was more focused on not passing out, and the unicorn who had wandered away and was now munching on the rainbow-colored flowers in horselike contentment, already clearing off a bare hole in the perfect arrangement.
Slowly, this realization came to her that no one really cared, not even the readers who wished the author would stop wasting so much time on this scene, as delicious as it was. Her tears slowly turned to rage at the fact that such a beautiful diva such as herself could be dirtied in such an impure way. Tobias, she had decided, was definitely not fit for her harem anymore. "You!" she snarled, yanking him up by the hair again, but not before making sure to stand behind him as she gave him a violent shake. "How DARE you! Don't you know who I AM? I am Princess Mariah Callista Amethyst Star Hope Faith Charity Sakura Eowyn of the world, and I will NOT take this INSULT lying down! You foul, uncouth, definitely not hot little bug of a little boy! I offered you everything! Power, luxury, a cleansing from your zombie state and most importantly, a place by my side, and this is how you REPAY ME? By being SICK on ME? On me, the perfect princess, and you dare to throw up on ME? You PUKED on me! Hurled! Spewed! Heaved! Upchucked! Ralphed! Wretched! Regurgitated! Blew chunks! Lost your lunch! Tossed your cookies! Worshipped the porcelein throne! Did the goddamned Technicolor yawn! Involuntary personal protein spill!!"
"To be fair," he gasped weakly, trying to get back to his feet and stop the pain in his head that was making his dizziness worse (although brain and stomach seemed to agree that all excess cargo had been tossed overboard), "that was more than one lunch."
"I don't CARE how many fucking lunches it was!" she hollered, yanking him around. "You've done the worst thing you could EVER do to precious ME! And oh, am I ever going to punish you for it!"
Tobias only sighed, too tired to feel intimidated by the threat. Somehow, he had a feeling Pablo and Eris were going to blame him for this.
The girl in question suddenly sneezed. "Are you okay?" Pablo asked her as she rubbed at her nose.
"Yeah. This place smells funny," she complained as she peeked in another room. A handsome man with a vacantly happy expression wearing nothing but boxers and a nametag that proclaimed his name as "William Kyle". "Or maybe I'm just allergic to idiot women. Geez, how many man-whores does she have?"
"Somehow, I don't think I really want to know," Pablo sighed as he went further down the hall, peeking into a side room. "Hey!"
"Hey what?" Eris echoed, walking over and peering over his shoulder.
Pablo frowned as he looked inside. "I thought I saw a plot device or something." The room he was peering in was too small to be a regular room, something closer to a walk-in closet that extended back a distance. It largely seemed to be filled with stacks of toilet paper, that almost seemed to form shelves for the other objects in the room, things like window cleaner, disinfectant, soap, and a skeleton outfitted in a janitor's outfit.
"Wow, cheery," Eris commented as she walked inside, picking up a lump of lead and giving it a shake. "It's like a closet of Things That Don't Belong. Is that a vaccuum?"
"Or something like it." Pablo followed her in slowly. "You know, I think the skeleton is a signal we should not waste our time in here. We have to find Nikado and Zayr, before Tobias gets in trouble."
"I know, but you said you saw a plot device."
"I think I just imagined it," he sighed. "The author isn't writing right now, after all. At least not as far as we know." He moved to give a poke to something that looked like a futuristic laser gun, than decided against it.
"Nope, wrong," she told him, cheery voice coming from behind a toilet paper stack.
Sighing again, he followed her inside. "How do you know the author is writing?"
"Not that." She poked her head out, then held something out. "Look what I found next to the teddy bears holding thermonuclear devices!"
Deciding not to question the object's neighbors, he took a look at it, and his expression lit up. "This is Zayr's sword. What's it doing back here?"
She shrugged, handing it over. "I dunno, it was just sitting there, like I said. I think the more important question is, where's the guy that's supposed to be attached to it?"
"I don't know." Pablo turned the sword over in his hands, thinking. "But maybe I can trace him with this...let me think for a moment." He pulled out his notebook, sitting down on a box filled with very small rocks.
Meanwhile, Eris, getting swiftly bored while waiting on Pablo's number crunching, looked around the room, bending over and peering at one of the teddy bears. It blinked abnormally large eyes at her, peering at her cutely as it cuddled its bomb. "Shinde moraimasen ka?"
"Aww, it's moving," Eris exclaimed to Pablo with a grin. "It wants to be friends."
Pablo sighed, looking at her. "Do you really want to trust something in this fortress, Eris?"
She shrugged, giving it a poke. "It doesn't seem to be harmful to me."
"Shinde moraimasen ka?" the bear repeated in a squeaky voice.
Eris gave it another poke in the head. "No speaky your weirdy language-y."
Its eyes crossed, and then spoke again. "Would you please do me the favor of dropping over dead?"
Eris paused, freezing with her finger an inch from its head. "Uh, Pablo, I don't think it likes me after all."
"Why, what's it doing?" He looked up.
The bear seemed to grin, and then pressed down on the bomb it was holding in its hands. "Oh SHIT," Eris exclaimed as a loud ticking filled the room, bodily grabbing a surprised Pablo in both arms and diving out the door, shutting it behind her. The door shook as a muffled explosion sounded inside the closet. "Well, that explains the skeleton!"
"What the hell did you do to them?" Pablo demanded irately.
"I didn't do anything!" she protested loudly, then paused. Behind them inside the closet, the sounds of multiple ticking began, echoing loudly.
"We should get out of here," Pablo said quietly, face gone pale.
Eris nodded jerkily, then grabbed his hand, running as fast as her legs could drag the mage, and the world behind them suddenly became a fiery ball of destruction and weapons that should not have existed in a fantasy setting.
Mariah had been dragging Tobias down the stairs when a rumbling sounded somewhere below them, and then the whole castle began to shake. "What the... What's going on? My castle!" Mariah howled as flames and the acrid smell of technological advancement shot down the hall. She threw out a hand, the flames harmlessly bouncing off an invisible barrier, letting Tobias drop to the ground, the boy forgotten.
Tobias shakily pulled himself to his feet as the flames died down. Mariah began storming down the hall, intent on finding out what had happened to her castle. Pushing himself along the wall, Tobias followed, hoping the others were okay.
"Take a break, Zayr."
The landowner glanced up from his attempts to get the door pried open even a little, trying to find some weakness in the smooth slab. "You just stay put, Nikado, I'll get this figured out. Ouch!" In his inattentiveness, his fingernail had caught on the door's crack, pulling part way off his finger. "Ow. Ow, damn it. That really hurt."
Nikado slid over to the other man, putting the injured digit in his mouth and sucking on it. Zayr watched him amusedly. "So that's how I get you to be quiet, now? Letting you suck on my finger?"
Nikado watched him for a moment, and then gave him a wicked grin, releasing the finger. "Oh, there's other things I could suck."
Zayr regretted saying that almost instantly as he felt the now familiar sensation of most of his body's blood congregating to his face, as if calling a sudden capillary party, bring your own oxygen. Before he could respond, though, a rumbling noise came from above their heads. "What on earth is that?"
Nikado listened, then frowned. "Sounds like it's getting closer."
It was getting closer. Nikado pushed Zayr down onto the ground, shielding the landowner with his own body, and then the door, as well as part of the wall ripped away, torn apart in the burst of flame and destruction that passed. Nikado held Zayr down, both watching the flames pass with tense expressions, and then they finally died down. Giving Zayr's hair a stroke, more for his own reassurement than the other's, Nikado slowly stood up, the shirt he had been holding against his chest falling off. "What in the bloody blazes was that?"
"An opportunity," Zayr told him seriously, pulling him out the door by the wrist. "Come on, let's find a way out of here."
"It's Pablo and Eris and Tobias!" Nikado told the other man excitedly as he followed. "They've come for us!"
"Of course they did," Zayr said distractedly, looking around. "Was there ever any doubt?" It wasn't hard to see where the explosion must have come from-- to their left, most of the hallway was gone, the burnt away edges still red-hot and sizzling. Zayr pulled Nikado toward the burnt area, and then both stopped at the edge, looking around in shock.
The center of the castle was gone. There was nothing to it outside of that. The teddy bears had done their job, and how, leaving a gaping sphere three stories high where there had been rooms and walls and massage therapists. The melted edges of the walls in a circular shape could still be seen, exposing the hallways and parts of rooms in the upper levels. "Holy cow," Nikado managed. "What the hell did Pablo and them *do*?"
"Nikado!" came a girl's voice from above. Eris was leaning over the edge of the burned area, peering down at them with a relieved expression. Her arm bore a sizeable burn, probably from the explosion, but she seemed all right otherwise. "You two are okay!" Pablo looked around her shoulder, smiling broadly as he spotted them.
Nikado grinned and waved back, obviously happy to see them, and even Zayr couldn't help but smile a bit. "Where's Tobias?" he called up.
"Guys, watch out!" the last member of the group called across the cleared out area from above. Tobias watched them from the top floor as Mariah hovered in midair, face dark and filled with a murderous intent as she descended toward the others.
"Eris, take Zayr's sword," Pablo instructed her in a calm, chilled voice devoid of any sort of unnecessary emotion. Reaching into a pocket, he slipped on one of the spare bracelets he had brought with them, slipping it on.
The girl jumped down to the lowest level as Mariah fired a burst of searing light at where Eris had been standing. Pablo had his notebook open, quickly scribbling down something, and a hole in space opened up, sucking in the energy. Simultaneously, a second hole emerged behind the evil woman, and her own attack shot out at her back. She seemed to see it coming, and dodged away.
Eris handed Zayr his sword with a serious expression. "I think this is yours."
He smiled and moved to take it as Mariah landed on the slag that was the bottom floor, Pablo jumping down as well. She snarled, expression twisted into a more accurate visage of what lurked underneath her pretty face, eyes blazing and teeth bared as she made a gesture, knocking the trio onto the ground and keeping them pressed there. "Well, mage," Mariah purred sweetly, drawing her hand up in a graceful gesture, prepared to cast another spell. "Let's see what a Zenzizenzizenzic can do, shall we?"
Pablo's eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything, scrawling down a quick equation. For a moment, heat leaked from the magess's body as he tried to bring up her body temperature, but she waved a hand, shattering the mathmatician's numbers. But he had already been working on a second attack, and no sooner had she shattered the spell than a black hole opened up behind her, trying to suck her in.
In response, she summoned several oversized wolves, which leapt for the younger mage. He sucked them away with a second black hole, closing it swiftly as she closed the one attacking her. There was a pause, and then the two both launched attacks again, her sending snakes across the floor, him trying to slow down her actions by lowering the energy around her, the air crystallizing as it froze.
She smirked, and turned the snakes, sending them heading toward the pinned-down trio instead. Pablo gasped in surprise. Not having time for writing down a spell, he yelled out a series of numbers, and the snakes exploded from sudden decompression. In his moment of distraction, though, she had fired another quick blast of searing light at him. Unable to catch it in another wormhole, he tried to dodge, taking the blast in the shoulder and arm. He stumbled back, landing on his rear as he bit his lip, quickly trying to pull a time-reversal on his injured arm. His next string of numbers was interrupted by her next attack of a summoned tiger, which pinned him down. He shot off a smiliar set of numbers to before, and the tiger, too, was explosively decompressed. He still had no time to return to the time-reversal to fix his arm as she fired at him again, and he scrambled to get out of the way.
"This is getting dangerous," Nikado grunted from his position on the floor, unable to get up or move thanks to the gravitational pressure forcing them down. "We need to help him." As he spoke, Pablo dodged across the floor clumsily, using wormholes to send a few of her attacks back at her.
Eris squirmed in place, trying to get closer to Nikado. "Pops, there's one of those bracelets in my pocket. Can you grab it?"
"I don't know," he got out, pushing his hand along the ground slowly. It was hard to move at all with the pressure on him, and he strained every muscle in his compressed form, trying to reach the enchanted bracelet. It hurt to even move, but something had to be done before Pablo was hurt further.
Meanwhile, everyone had forgotten about Tobias, who had been stuck on the third floor when the fighting had started. Watching for only a moment as the villainous woman began to attack Pablo, he tried to find the easiest way down that didn't involve him breaking anything. Slowly trying to lower himself over the edge, his head spun in dizziness for a moment, and he forced it back down, dropping down to the second floor. One down, one to go. He tackled the second descent right away, even though his hands felt hot and flushed and ached with every movement, but he ignored that as well, using the wall to brace himself as he let himself drop down.
His fingers were back, he noticed suddenly. The sudden surprise of the observation prompted him to wiggle the previously missing digits, and in doing so he lost his tenuous grip, dropping the rest of the way to the ground with an undignified and graceless thud onto his rear. Wincing, Tobias stumbled back to his feet to see what was going on.
Mariah was continuing her relentless attacks on Pablo, sending simultaneous summoned animals and blasts at him. Without his notebook which had been dropped not long after the tiger, he could only counterspell one at a time, which left him dodging frantically, unable to launch a counterattack of his own.
Tobias decided to do something that in his current state was probably more than a little foolish, and slightly suicidal to boot. Grabbing a piece of rock, he yelled at Mariah, "Hey, you ugly, smelly witch, stop picking on him!"
She turned toward his voice with a large spell of lightning building around her arm, ready to fire at him, and he threw the rock. It pinned her right between the eyes, momentarily stunning her with a comical cross-eyed expression and causing her to lose her concentration on the spell, which quickly spiraled out of control, drawing painful blackened burns across her skin. She screeched, a horrible sound.
"Four!" Pablo rasped out, flicking his fingers, and the bracelet shot out of Eris's pocket, into Nikado's waiting fingers. It shredded swiftly, dissipating the gravitational spell, and Nikado immediately put his weight on one hand, bringing his foot around to impact against her neck. There was a loud crunching sound as her neck snapped, the sound the only thing that was audible in the room for a moment, and then she crumpled to the ground in a flutter of soiled cloth.
"Tobias!" Eris called to the boy, getting to her feet and running over to him. "Are you okay?" She took his face in her hands. "Tobias, you're burning up. And your eyes are a funny color."
He leaned on her tiredly, not really wanting to explain something that he didn't understand himself, outside of the burning and the puking. "No, but I will be."
She gave his hair a pet. "That was a good job you did," she told him, giving him a little kiss on the cheek.
Pablo muttered a few more equations, dispersing the remainder of the animals as he stumbled over to retrieve his notebook. "Is everyone okay?" Zayr called.
"I will be if you give me a minute," Pablo murmured, deciding to join Tobias and Eris so he could sit down and rest for a moment.
"Is she dead?" Zayr asked Nikado.
The scholar reached out to turn her over and check, and stopped as a high-pitched giggle began to rise from the body. It rose in volume and intensity to a crazed, almost feverish level, and then she sat up, twisting her head back into place with a sickening crack.
"Idiots," Mariah purred, and then her hand shot out, grabbing Nikado by the neck and lifting him off the ground. "It was a nice try, really," she complimented, "but even you lot aren't good enough to beat perfection." She put her other hand against his chest, firing another blast of searing light.
Zayr moved swiftly, bringing his sword with the strength of both hands behind it down on the woman's arm, hoping to cut Nikado free. Mariah screamed as her hand was severed, dropping Nikado to the ground. Gasping for breath, he quickly flung the detatched body part away from him, and she went after it.
"Over here, quick!" Pablo was doing some frantic calculations. Mariah snarled, reattaching her hand and then firing another blast at them, but Tobias pulled another of the bracelets out of his own pocket and put it on, using it to deflect the blast. With a stab of the pencil, Pablo finished the numbers, and then the group vanished.
Mariah howled at the escape of the group, flinging another blast into the corridors of her ruined castle. "Just you wait, I'll get you for this!" she screamed, firing more blasts. "This isn't over!"
Pablo's teleportation spell landed the group just outside the Vision Forest, not far from where they had originally exited it in search of Nikado. As they landed, an earthquake began to rumble through the ground, shaking everything rather violently for a brief moment. "What was that?" Eris asked uncertainly.
"Earthquake," Pablo said tensely, putting a hand to his injured and useless arm. "What's the situation? Is everybody here?" he asked tiredly, wishing he could just rest.
"Nikado's injured," Zayr informed him, laying the older man down. The wound on his chest had been reopened and made worse by the blast to the chest, but at least he was still breathing.
Pablo stumbled to his feet to make his way over to the other man, but Tobias put a hand out, stopping the other mage's movement. "I'll handle it, Pablo. You need to rest."
"Tobias," Pablo protested, but the older boy had already knelt by Nikado, holding out one hand over the man's chest. Swirls of power grew under his fingers, rolling over the scholar's injured form like a heavy fog, the wounds closing themselves and regenerating properly. Tobias added in his other hand, and the fog spread, sealing and soothing the burns and half-healed wounds along the man's limbs, the bruises vanishing like invisible ink. Finally satisfied that Nikado was okay, he removed his hands.
Zayr stared at him for a long moment. "Tobias. Your hands, they're still in one piece. And your finger's back."
"I know," he replied softly, rubbing at his neck as he stood up. "Pablo, let me see your arm."
The mage regarded the other for a moment, then decided he wouldn't object if Tobias was volunteering. "His eyes have changed color, too," Eris pointed out.
"Tobias, what happened to you?" Zayr asked in concern as Nikado sat up, rubbing at his chest. "Are you okay?"
"I'm not really sure," he replied. "She did something to me, and I think it messed with the zombie spell."
"She what?" Pablo whirled on the other boy, putting two fingers of his uninjured arm against the other's forehead. After a minute pause, he removed them, rubbing at a temple. "Ay yai yai, what a headache."
Eris watched in puzzlement, then leaned her head against his back, listening. "No wonder you're so hot. I can hear your heart beat."
He looked surprised at that, and then his lips twitched slightly in a half-smile. "Funny, I don't remember feeling so awful when I was alive." Another wave of dizziness made the world spin for a moment, and he felt himself fall, Pablo and Eris catching him.
"I don't think we have the time to investigate it fully," Nikado said slowly, getting to his feet after a moment of unsteadiness. "She's bound to come after us, and she can probably find us quickly, too. She didn't have any problems finding me." He yanked at his ponytail, pacing a bit. "How on earth do we counter someone that doesn't die no matter what?"
"Actually, I have an idea," Zayr told them quietly. "We need to get back to the campsite."
The scholar looked at him, but before he could ask, Eris let out a warning shout. "Above!"
Zayr spun, looking up. Above them, the black monolith loomed, but it was obviously in much poorer shape than when they had seen it before. There were obvious cracks and holes in the walls, some with smoke pouring out of them, and the castle itself seemed to be lower, slowly sinking to the ground. "Into the woods! Campsite, hurry!" Zayr ordered, seizing Nikado by the arm and dragging him into the cover of the woods.
Tobias could only stumble a few steps, so Eris pulled him onto her back with Pablo's help, letting him ride piggyback style as she pushed herself into the woods, refusing to be slowed down by her burden. Pablo followed, trying not to stumble as he looked back. "She's coming!"
"To the tear!" Zayr shouted from ahead. "We have to beat her to the tear! We can use its power to defeat her!"
Pablo watched Zayr with a confused look, but didn't question him, just trying to keep up as he glanced behind again. Mariah was gone. A hard lump formed in the mage's stomach as he followed the group.
As Zayr and Nikado reached the clearing with the fragment of the fourth wall, the landowner skidded to a halt, Nikado almost crashing into him. Eris and Pablo arrived moments later. "What's wrong?" Eris asked Zayr, seeing him stopped, and then she saw what he was seeing.
Mariah was already in the middle of the clearing, standing dangerously close to the fragment as she watched them with a smirk. "It really is almost commendable that you made it this far," she laughed mockingly, eyes gliding over the group. "But let's face it. I'm smarter, prettier, faster, stronger, more powerful, and just plain better than all of you put together. Did you really think this little light source would help you beat the unbeatable?" She reached out to give it a mocking pat.
"No!" Pablo shouted, a bit of panic from remembered fear coloring his voice. "Don't touch it! You mustn't!"
She laughed openly at him. "Oh? Why's that? What will happen?" After a moment, she moved to touch it with a decisive force. "This?"
As her hand made contact with the tear, it was like the breath had been squeezed from her throat as she stood there with a bug-eyed, frightened expression for a moment. And then she was gone, sucked into the void inside the fragment, unable to cross to the other side.
There was silence for a long moment as the group stood in tired, stunned quiet. "Zayr, that was genius of you," Nikado managed softly.
"We should leave here," Zayr said wearily, sheathing his sword at last. "We don't have our supplies. Let us go rest at my homestead."
"Rest sounds like a good idea," Pablo agreed. "And perhaps a meal, if anyone's up to eating. I don't even want to think about having to clean up her crashed fortress."
"I'm always up for eating," Eris piped up. "Got to keep my athletic figure, you know."
Zayr turned his back on the fragment, motioning the way. "It isn't that far from here." As they walked, though, Zayr began to doubt their ability to make it the rest of the way. Eris was still trudging along, Tobias having already passed out on her back. Pablo was obviously exhausted, mostly managing to stay on his feet by focusing on following Eris. And even though Nikado's physical injuries had healed, the strain of the battle and three days or more in Mariah's grip had left him weakened and unsteady on his feet, but he kept all traces of tiredness off his face, stubbornly walking on.
After watching Pablo almost totter off his feet again, Zayr pulled the younger mage onto his own back, and the mage collapsed almost immediately, a lump of unmoving weight on the landowner's back. "You know, sometimes I forget he's only seventeen," Nikado commented to Zayr softly, brushing a hand on the mage's face. "He's got the eyes of a thirty year old."
"Aye, it would have been nice if he had been able to have a real childhood," Zayr replied softly. "But there is little that can be done about that. How are you holding up?"
"Well enough," Nikado replied. "Though I can't wait for a real bed. I think that will be the first thing I greet, even before Leil. Sorry, Zayr."
The landowner frowned. "I could run ahead and let all of you rest. A carriage could be brought."
Nikado shook his head. "I'd rather keep moving until I can safely collapse, thanks."
"I'm fine too, thanks for asking," Eris piped up.
Nikado chuckled, reaching out and rubbing at her head. "Your hair's growing out, kid. Think we can make a few more bracelets out of it?"
"Pablo's got one left, I think," the girl replied with a shrug, "but I suppose so. They are pretty handy."
"Very," Nikado agreed. "Just another part of the unstoppable team."
"That's right," she told him, puffing up with pride. "Not even bad so-called perfect characters can bring us down."
Nikado glanced over at Zayr at that, giving the other man a little rub on the shoulder. "You did well, thinking of that," Nikado complimented gently, noticing the darkness under the landowner's eyes.
"All the same, it was a tactic I would have rather not used," Zayr replied tiredly. "But it could not have been avoided."
"No, it couldn't," Nikado told him, then looked ahead. "Hey, we're almost there. C'mon, Zayr, chin up, let's pick up the pace and get there already."
When they had arrived, the servants were, naturally, quite surprised to see their lord trudging home in the middle of the night with four exhausted travelling companions. Several hands were roused to help Tobias, Pablo and Eris to the spare bedrooms as well as guiding Nikado to his own room. Zayr left brief instructions for breakfast to expect five more than the day before and to inform Trallia and Leil in the morning of his return, and to send someone out in the morning to retrieve the Zenzizenzizenzic's pack mule. Having said that, he made a beeline for his own room, collapsing as soon as he hit the pillow. That was not a fun fight, he reflected briefly, and he hoped it didn't have to ever happen again. But before he could ponder on where Mariah had come from or what her coming meant, he had fallen asleep.
